The Strip Mine and The Swamp

BROKEN GROUND: MINING EPISODE 

Host: Have you ever been to a place that is SO ecologically intact that it just feels … timeless?

Shannon Byrne: This is like being in, I don’t know, like the Galapagos, like, like Darwin’s lab. Like, you can spread your thoughts out. It’s just, uh, expansive. 

Bill Sapp: When you’re out in a canoe on the water, it just seems like the sky is so much closer. I mean, the moon is bigger and the stars are bigger. Constellations just pop out. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: This is not just any type of swamp. There’s a lot of history here. Hypothetically speaking, maybe Twin Pines could mine it successfully, but what we’re saying, is it worth it?

MUSIC OUT HERE, TRANSITION TO THEME MUSIC

Host: This is Broken Ground, a podcast by the Southern Environmental Law Center. I’m Leanna First-Arai, your host. Here at Broken Ground, we dig up environmental stories in the South, and introduce you to the people at the heart of them. 

THEME MUSIC OUT

Host: Did you know we’re in the midst of a global mining boom? So what does that mean here in the rural South? Well, last year, the South was actually the leading region in the U.S. for mining so-called “industrial minerals” – materials like lithium, sand, and clay. Many of these minerals are used in everyday products like plastics and paint – but at what cost? 

How much of the burden should rural residents be expected to shoulder for hosting extractive industries? Ones with a reputation for going bankrupt and leaving communities to deal with their legacy? 

And are there places that just shouldn’t be mined at all? 

In this episode, we bring you the story of a swamp that the Muscogee Creek Nation once called “The Most Blissful Place on Earth” … and the titanium dioxide mine that could threaten its very existence. 

(Alligator roars)

Today, we’re visiting the Okefenokee swamp in southern Georgia. And little did we know before we got here, it’s alligator mating season. 

Matt Rouse, Tour Guide: Whoever’s got the lowest deepest growls always attracts the most females for mating. There’s one right here on the left coming out! Very soon the females will be laying their eggs and about the end of August or the first of September we’ll have the baby alligator hatch. So, there’s a healthy population of alligators here, I promise you.

(Boat sounds) 

Matt Rouse: My name is Matt. I’ll be your guide this morning and on behalf of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and your host Okefenokee Adventures Incorporated, we want to welcome you all here to the Okefenokee Swamp and National Wildlife Refuge.

Host: Ok, so we’re out here in the back of a little metal john boat with about a dozen other visitors and our tour guide Matt Rouse, cruising up a narrow canal lined by cypress trees cloaked with Spanish moss. We’ve been talking with people for months about the Okefenokee and why they love it. And I can tell you, honestly, you’ve got to COME here to feel what it’s all about. 

Leanna First-Arai: There are dragonflies everywhere. I’ve seen about fifteen, I’d say. Blue, green, pink. 

Matt Rouse: There goes an egret to the left over there. You see the white waterlilies. When the sun comes up over the horizon, those white water lilies open. It takes about 30 minutes. So if you happen to be out here at dawn,  you can watch this whole prairie just slowly turn white. 

Host: This prairie full of water lilies sits in only about three feet of water. Most of the Okefenokee is surprisingly shallow. Here, it’s peppered with islands of different sizes. Some are solid earth, and others are literally just squishy rafts of floating peat. Peat is that spongy, nutrient-rich organic matter that, when placed under high pressure and heat, eventually becomes coal. Perhaps best known for the flavor it gives Scotch whiskeys, peat is ultimately made of plants decomposing in waterlogged conditions.

Matt Rouse: Now on these islands in the swamp, whether it’s a peat-formed island or a real island, it doesn’t matter, as long as it has grass, bushes, and trees on it, you’re liable to find some wildlife there. Deer, maybe a panther, bobcat, fox, coyote, squirrel, skunk, raccoon, possum, armadillo. I mean, just lots and lots of animals are living out here on these tree covered islands. 

Host: And lots of fish living below apparently, though we can’t see them in the dark water. This is after all, a blackwater swamp, which means its filled with tannins, molecules present in bark, leaves and fruit that you also find in a glass of wine … minus the headache of course. 

Matt Rouse: Our only source of water here in the Okefenokee is rain. It’s the only swamp in the world that I know of that has no water flowing into it, but it does have water flowing out of it.

Host: No water flowing in. That detail is going to be important, as you’ll hear in a bit. As shallow as it is, this freshwater swamp is actually the headwaters for two important rivers: the Saint Mary’s which connects to the Atlantic, and a second one called … 

Matt Rouse: Nobody knows? The Suwanee, the Suwanee river. (singing) Way down upon the Suwan … A lot of people have heard of the Suwanee River, but they don’t know that this is the source of the Suwanee River, the Okefenokee. 

MUSIC IN HERE

Host: As we come to the end of our 90-minute tour, it’s pretty clear just how special this swamp really is. 

MUSIC FADES OUT

Matt Rouse: It’s a good thing that it’s being protected as a National Wildlife Refuge by th e U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but they could use all the help they can get, especially when it comes to the private land right around the edge of the Okefenokee. And there’s one particular area where they want to do some mining. 

MUSIC IN HERE

TV NEWS CLIP

First Coast News Anchor: Well, a major debate tonight over the creation of a new mine. We’re talking about southeast Georgia, where there’s environmental impact concerns over a titanium deposit. Now that site borders the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge … 

Bill Sapp: It landed like a punch in the gut.

Host: Bill Sapp is a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, and a huge fan of the Okefenokee. He remembers the first time he heard that a company called Twin Pines hoped to begin strip-mining an area of wetlands near the swamp known as “Trail Ridge.”

Bill Sapp: Trail Ridge holds back the Okefenokee Swamp. So what Twin Pines wants to do is excavate sand all the way down 50 feet into that Ridge, scoop up all the sand, separate out what they want, and then they’re going to put it all back in the hole. 

Host: Bill says messing with the composition of the sands and soils there, risks making the natural dam more porous.

Bill Sapp: Even very small changes in water elevations can really have a dramatic effect.  

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Host: That’s in part because, as our tour guide mentioned, rain is the swamp’s SOLE source of water. There’s nothing else that replenishes it. If mining activity leads to lower water levels in this delicately balanced ecosystem, that could compromise the aquatic habitat for all of the swamp’s creatures and plants, many of which – like the red-cockaded woodpecker – are already endangered. But there’s another risk as well. Remember the peat, that precursor to coal?

Bill Sapp: If the peat becomes dried out, it could well raise the risk of forest fires. And there have been massive fires that have hit the Okefenokee.

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TV NEWS CLIP

News Anchor: It started in April after a lightning strike. 

Host: The “West Mims Fire” began in April of 2017.

News Anchor: It jumped 7,000 acres in just a matter of hours. 

Reporter: 80 people have been evacuated from their homes. 

Reporter: Even with the 700 first responders fighting this fire on ground and in the air, they say that the dry conditions are causing them a huge problem, and they don’t see an end in sight to this fire. 

Host: Uncontrollable fires like this are becoming more frequent across the country, as climate change causes more prolonged droughts. But they’re a particular threat HERE in the Okefenokee Swamp because of the peat, which, by the way, holds TONS of climate-warming carbon.

Bill Sapp: The Okefenokee is one of our biggest carbon sinks in the country, and the last thing we want is to increase the risk that it’ll catch fire. 

Leanna First-Arai: Become like a carbon bomb, so to speak, no? From carbon sink to carbon bomb.  

Bill Sapp: Yeah, exactly.

MUSIC FADES OUT

Host: Scientists from multiple organizations, including the hydrologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have expressed similar concerns. And they’ve questioned the science that Twin Pines is using to insist water levels won’t be impacted. Meanwhile, in a video promoting its quote unquote “innovative practices,” a company representative for Twin Pines maintains that there’s nothing to worry about, dismissing concerns as mere speculation. 

TWIN PINES VIDEO CLIP

Twin Pines Narrator: Any assertion that mining activities would drain the Swamp is just wrong. Water would have to defy gravity and flow uphill for that to happen.

Host: Bill says none of this brings him peace, especially given the company’s past. 

Bill Sapp: We are dealing with a company that has a very checkered history of compliance with environmental laws. If you look at the people that have a controlling interest in Twin Pines, they’ve been part of other corporations, and those corporations have had a history of environmental violations.

Host: It’s clear, Bill says, that like man y industries seeking to build in the rural South, Twin Pines’ leadership views environmental fines as merely a cost of doing business. So there’s no reason to expect that their titanium dioxide mine would be run any differently.  

And if you’re wondering what purpose titanium dioxide serves, well, it’s a whitener, used in products like paint, tampons and toothpaste. Useful, but hardly “critical” or, for that matter, hard to come by.

Bill Sapp: There’s nothing rare about titanium dioxide. There’s other mines in Georgia, in Florida. There’s a new mine that’s opening up in Tennessee. And so that raises the question: why would you even contemplate mining next to the swamp.

MUSIC IN HERE

Host: Part of why Bill was so stunned by the proposed mine was because another company had tried the same thing 30 years prior.  Multinational chemical giant Dupont ALSO wanted to mine for titanium dioxide on Trail Ridge. It took years, but a group of activists eventually rallied enough opposition that Dupont retired its mineral rights, and then donated thousands of acres to the Refuge. It was a huge win and a huge relief. So you can imagine … catching word of a NEW proposed mine felt to Bill like history was repeating itself. 

Bill Sapp: All of us assumed that that fight was over, that no company would even think about trying to set up shop on the doorstep of the Okefenokee again. So it really rocked me.  

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Host: To make matters worse, at the time, the Trump Administration was pushing for projects like this to be fast-tracked, so Bill says it was clear: the swamp’s advocates had to get organized. And quickly.

Bill Sapp: So I reached out to every environmental group that I thought would be interested in fighting this fight. And then I reserved a room down at the National Wildlife Refuge. And I just remember sitting at the table in that room, just waiting to see who would show up.

MUSIC IN HERE

Bill Sapp: And it was amazing. It was like the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life … 

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE MOVIE CLIP

Mary Bailey: Come on, George. Come on downstairs. Quick! They’re on their way! 

Bill Sapp: … where everybody in the community comes, bringing what they can to the table. The room just filled up.  

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Mary Bailey: George, it’s a miracle!

Bill Sapp: Filled up with people that just loved the Okefenokee and could not bear that it was being threatened again. 

Host: That group became “The Okefenokee Protection Alliance.” And since its first meeting, membership has ballooned … to a few more people than can fit in a room.

Bill Sapp: Now if you add up all the members from all the groups, it’s over 5 million people.

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Host: Many of those members are from organizations that have long been involved with environmental causes. But plenty of them are brand new to this kind of work, including a man who has arguably become the local face of the mining fight.  

Reverend Antwon Nixon: Oh, there he is right there. 

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Host: He actually joined us for the boat tour, and then we chatted in a pair of bright blue rocking chairs near the dock, while a curious alligator looked on from the water below.

Reverend Antwon Nixon: You remember last time we was out here and I did an interview and he stayed there the whole time.

Leanna First-Arai: He’s here for it. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: He made his self known. 

Leanna First-Arai: My goodness. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: My name is Antwon Nixon. Born and raised here in Folkston and pretty much spent all my life here. 

Host: Reverend Nixon is the pastor at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Folkston, Georgia, a town of fewer than 5,000 people on the Okefenokee’s eastern edge. He’s a community leader and a mentor for kids, but until recently hadn’t considered himself an environmentalist. In fact, he first heard about the mine a full two years after it was proposed. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: I was shocked because I live just three miles from this place. And I had heard nothing about it. No one was talking about mining. Nobody was talking about the swamp, really. So I was like, what could I do to help? 

Host: Reverend Nixon says it was his childhood connection with the swamp that stirred something in him.

MUSIC IN HERE

Reverend Antwon Nixon: I was always infatuated with this one alligator out there back where I was a kid, so, I think it just kind of tapped into that. You know, that’s 30 something years I hadn’t been – I had been away, and I think it just brought me back to my childhood. There was more than a physical connection to it. It’s all spiritual for me here, you know?

Host: As he immersed himself in the work of the Okefenokee Protection Alliance – becoming in his own words, its quote, unquote “local foot soldier”– Reverend Nixon began digging more into the swamp’s history. Something that surprised him? Many of the swamp’s boardwalks and canals had been built in the 1930s by a team of Black laborers, “Company 1433.” But they had largely been left out of the Okeefenokee’s official history.

Reverend Antwon Nixon: No names. No nothing. All they said is ‘Company 1433 cut down some logs.’

Host: He also came to understand how, just a few generations back, Black residents in the area saw the swamp as a refuge – not just for wildlife, but for themselves as well.

Reverend Antwon Nixon: Growing up in the rural South in a time where segregation was still big, you couldn’t go to the beaches, you know, you couldn’t go to no water parks or anything like that here. And the only place that you could come was to the swamp. But it was a sanctuary to them. 

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Host: Of course, the Okefenokee was a sanctuary to others long before that. Okefenokee is a Muscogee word. One English translation is this:

RaeLynn Butler: Shaking water in a low place. 

Host: RaeLynn Butler is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, and manager of its historic and cultural preservation department in Oklahoma, where the tribe is based.

RaeLynn Butler: And, uh, I’d like to also introduce myself traditionally. Uh, RaeLynn Butler, Djahojifkidos, Omelegida, Wakogi, Omedowo, Pekan Tallahassee. 

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Host: The Muscogee Creek Nation is the federally recognized tribe that used to live in and around the Okefenokee, before they were forcibly removed by the U.S. government in the eighteen hundreds. 

RaeLynn Butler: The same reasons you love to live in Georgia are the same reasons why we did too. For so long, people said, ‘Well, why did y’all leave?’ We were forced to leave. We didn’t want to leave. And for a long time it wasn’t safe to come back here. You could be hung and you had to have permission from the governor to enter. To have that kind of, uh, historical trauma, you know. It really has only been in the last 50 years the nation had even decided to try to start coming back. 

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Host: Despite their current physical distance from the Okefenokee, the Muscogee Creek Nation rushed to its defense. As Raelynn Butler says: 

RaeLynn Butler: We’re still here in that we still care about these lands. And so we are reasserting our presence in our homelands. 

Host: And that brings us back to the early days of the Twin Pines saga. When the company first bought up privately owned land on Trail Ridge and proposed to mine in the wetlands there, they had a big hurdle to clear: the Clean Water Act.

Bill Sapp: Ever since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, these small streams and the wetlands, like you see on, on Trail Ridge were protected. 

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Host: Protected in the sense that polluters discharging into them were required to go through a rigorous environmental review and permitting process with federal agencies. So, in the case of a potential mine on the edge of the Okefenokee, it was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that was charged with making the final decision to approve or reject the mine based on potential damage to the aquatic environment. As is typical for this kind of project, the Corps invited the public to comment on the mining proposal. And there was no shortage of opposition. Thanks in part to the Okefenokee Protection Alliance that Bill Sapp helped form.

MUSIC OUT HERE

Bill Sapp: 65,000 people took some time, picked up their pens and wrote notes to the Army Corps of Engineers saying, ‘The federal government needs to protect the Okefenokee swamp.’

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Host: One group that wrote to the Corps right around this time, in April 2020, was the Muscogee. 

RaeLynn Butler: We actually made the first step to contact the Army Corps of Engineers to say, ‘Hey, what’s going on? When are we going to start tribal consultation?,’ which is required for federal permits.

Host: Under federal law, tribes must be consulted for projects that may impact lands that hold cultural significance for them. And Trail Ridge – in addition to being covered with ecologically valuable wetlands, and literally holding in the swamp – is believed to contain Muscogee burial mounds. 

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Host: So the tribe’s participation ultimately meant that the Army Corps had more studying to do. It also gave the Swamp’s advocates more time to gather data on the science and build a case against Twin Pines. But just when the members of the Okefenokee Protection Alliance were starting to feel cautiously optimistic … 

MUSIC IN HERE

TV NEWS CLIP

PBS News Anchor: The Trump administration rolled back Obama-era regulations on the Clean Water Act this week. 

Bill Sapp: The Trump administration basically pulled the rug out from under the Army Corps of Engineers. So Twin Pines didn’t have to get permission from the federal government anymore. So that left the state of Georgia with the only authority to regulate this mine. 

Host: As we’ll hear more than once this season, leaving matters in the hands of state environmental agencies has not boded well for residents of other rural southern communities facing unwanted industrial development. In part, that may be because state agencies are more likely to be under-resourced, and to have less expertise than federal agencies do. But state agencies just sometimes seem to favor economic development over the environment. Which Reverend Nixon finds more than a little outrageous.

Reverend Antwon Nixon: You’re the Environmental Protection Division. You know, you’re supposed to be defending the rights of the environment! You’re supposed to be protecting it! The problem is not you don’t have enough evidence. The problem is we have too much ignorance. And they’re still deliberating about this process, so – and it’s sad that it’s still up in the air. 

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Host: By this point, Reverend Nixon says it should be overwhelmingly clear that a mine with such potential to harm the Okefenokee is not a good idea, and the Georgia EPD should act accordingly. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: They have the jurisdiction to shut all this down. 

Host: And they certainly have the public support. When EPD invited the public to comment on the mining proposal last year, the virtual meeting room was flooded with folks eager to ‘have a word’ with the state agency. 

CLIPS FROM PUBLIC COMMENT SESSION

Mackenzi Hallmark, Freshwater Scientist, UGA: Can you hear me? 

Moderator: Yes, we can.  

Mackenzi Hallmark, Freshwater Scientist, UGA: I’m deeply concerned with how this permit does not seem to recognize fundamental principles of hydrology. 

Derrick Dawson, Sr.: We are totally against giving Twin Pines this permit.

Sheila Carter, Charlton County Resident: Please don’t let them mine what God has put for us here to enjoy and generations beyond us.  

Bill Edens, Biotech Executive, Norcross, GA: I have never attended much less spoken at a meeting like this before, and I am not an environmental crusader. We’re all counting on you. Please don’t let us down. 

Gina Ward, Co-Chair, Madison County Clean Power Coalition: If you grant them a permit, Twin Pines will destroy the Okefenokee just like its sister company destroyed my community. Please, please do not let that happen. Thank you. 

MUSIC IN HERE

Host: According to reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Twin Pines and firms associated with its parent company have been responsible for more than 70 environmental violations at a variety of facilities, including at a biomass power plant that drove that last woman we heard from out of her community in Northeast Georgia. In fairness, though, there was ONE person who spoke in favor of the mine … this executive from the Georgia Mining Association.

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Lee Lemke, Exec. VP, Georgia Mining Association: All they want to do is dig a hole, use the water and gravity to separate the minerals from the sand and put the sand back in the hole.

Host: Every other speaker was opposed. In fact, no other permit application in Georgia history has drawn as much opposition as the Twin Pines proposal. Bill says a project like this might normally receive a couple thousand comments. This project has received a QUARTER MILLION since the fight began 5 years ago. And yet, earlier this year, the Georgia EPD moved one step closer to approving the mine. 

TV NEWS CLIP

News Anchor: Developing now, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division has issued draft permits for a controversial strip mining project near the Okefenokee Swamp. 

Host: Draft permits aren’t the final step, of course. They’re issued to solicit feedback before the actual permits are granted. And again, comments poured in. 

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Host: While the state agency sorts through all of the comments it received, swamp supporters like Reverend Nixon and RaeLynn Butler aren’t just sitting on their hands waiting for a decision. They’ve gotten busy with another creative approach to protecting the swamp. 

RaeLynn Butler: We actually also helped write letters of support for the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

Host: Winning a UNESCO World Heritage site designation would place  the Okefenokee on par with other iconic tourist destinations like Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks in the U.S., the Taj Mahal in India, and the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt. And it would likely double tourism in the swamp.

RaeLynn Butler: How amazing is it that a site like this could be honored worldwide and be, you know, here in Georgia in part of our, uh, ancestral homelands?

Host: As a member of the alliance, Reverend Nixon is also actively pushing for the UNESCO designation, knowing that the increase in tourism could have a positive domino effect in Folkston and surrounding areas.

Reverend Antwon Nixon: If you have something that can generate traffic, where are they staying? Are there any hotels there? They’re going to build one. Where are they eating at? And then you’re going to get ultimately what the people really need, jobs. But here’s what you’re not doing: you’re not putting the Okefenokee in no harm.

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Host: This idea resonated with the owners of an amazing little bed and breakfast where the Broken Ground podcast team stayed while we were in Folkston. 

Alease Kelly: My name’s Alease Kelly, and this is my husband, Ted Kelly. 

Ted Kelly: (laughing) All right. So we own the bed and breakfast here at The Inn at Folkston. And we’ve been here over 11 years now.

Alease Kelly: We have benefited from all kinds of visitors for business purposes here, but we don’t want to benefit from anything that’s going to damage the Okefenokee.

Ted Kelly: So if the ecosystem is damaged it hurts the tourism of people actually coming into the swamp. So, you know, one company may benefit, but then the whole town or the community loses as a whole. 

Host: Will you indulge me for a second? I want to talk about the delicious breakfast Ted and Alease made for us at their inn. It’s really a perfect metaphor I think, for how tourism’s little tentacles can touch the local economy, particularly in a rural area. 

Ted Kelly: So this morning we had french toast and bacon. And we get farm fresh eggs from Ms. Glenda who runs the beauty shop down the street. We have a neighbor named Ms. O’Berry. We can get, um, fresh blueberries from Miss O’Berry. And we actually go down the street to the hardware store, buy all of our sausage there, which is good. And so what we try to do is try to support each other as much as possible. Did I miss anything? 

Alease Kelly: That’s it. 

Ted Kelly: That’s it. Yeah 

Host: With our bellies full, it was easy to envision the kind of ripple effect that a boost in tourism could have here in Folkston … and on the flip side, the damage that could be done to that delicate economic web if the Swamp is harmed. All of which made us wonder: who exactly is supporting the mine?

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Host: We know that the County Commission passed a resolution in favor of it years ago, tempted by Twin Pines’ promise of bringing 150 good-paying jobs to the area. But get this: according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, eco-tourism related to the Refuge already supports around FIVE TIMES that number of jobs. Jobs that could be threatened if the swamp is imperiled. Which is why Reverend Nixon says …

Reverend Antwon Nixon: We need to educate the people here about the economical impact that the Okefenokee can bring to the community so that we don’t have to take the dangling apple in front of us because we’re a poverty stricken area, which is the easiest way to manipulate people is to dangle something in front of them. That’s been going on since Genesis.  

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Host: One way Reverend Nixon is hoping to educate the people is by erecting a monument to Company 1433, that group of forgotten Black laborers who helped build the refuge’s canals and boardwalks. For that effort, he has the support of Georgia Senator Rafael Warnock. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: Sometimes good comes out of bad. 

Host: As he pushes for the monument, Reverend Nixon is also working to draw more locals to the swamp. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: I say, come out here, see it. You know, visit it, go on boat tours, you know, get involved, go to the boardwalk You know, you won’t advocate for something you don’t love.

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Host: Luckily, it seems like a lot of people love the Okefenokee. According to a poll taken in June 2024, a whopping 93 percent of Georgia voters thought it was important to protect the Okefenokee … even if that came at the expense of some quote unquote “economic development.”  

MUSIC IN HERE  

Host: We actually bumped into one of those Georgia voters while checking out an observation tower in the swamp with Reverend Nixon. He’d had surgery on his Achilles tendon recently, so he stayed below while the team and I climbed four flights to the top. There, we admired the aerial view of peat islands giving way on the horizon to longleaf pines. When we came back down, Reverend Nixon had made a friend.

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Shannon Byrne: Shannon from Atlanta. 

Group: Shannon from Atlanta. 

Host: Shannon Byrne from Atlanta was here in the Okefenokee for the second time.

Shannon Byrne: Oh, you know, I wanted to do something special today. It was my, it’s my sister’s birthday. She’s no longer alive. So I was like, I want to be somewhere full of life and full of, you know, inspiration and beauty and just – and it’s been inspiring. So I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me using her birthday as an excuse to come to the Okefenokee. 

Host: Shannon brought a camera with a giant telephoto lens to take photos of birds. And she saw LOTS of them.

Shannon Byrne: Oh today, I saw a barred owl, and I saw a green heron, Northern Parulas, Indigo Buntings. They’re all in those bushes. 

Host: Without us even prompting, she mentioned the mining threat and explained how since her first visit to the Okefenokee, she had joined an alliance dedicated to protecting the swamp.

Shannon Byrne: I mean, I’m already involved in some of the advocacy the Okefenokee Alliance. Involved in as much as the campaigns to write your legislators. 

Host: Little did Shannon know that she had just befriended one of the Okefenokee Protection Alliance’s key local players. Reverend Nixon stood to the side with a BIG, proud smile, having spent the last few hours explaining how hard he was working to educate people about the swamp and the alliance.

Shannon Byrne: And hopefully we’ll find out more about when it’s going to be declared a World Heritage Site. So that would be good. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: We’re the one that’s actually bringing that here.

Shannon Byrne: That’s amazing. That’s incredible. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: It’s looking like it’s going to be a go. Yeah. But I’m so inspired that you’re so informed, for one. 

Shannon Byrne: Oh, yeah. 

Reverend Antwon Nixon: But you’re also caught up with what we’re doing, and you’re on our side. So I appreciate that. 

Shannon Byrne: I am definitely on your side. And once I post these pictures and videos, I’m telling you it’s over. I’m going to break the internet. 

MUSIC IN HERE

Reverend Antwon Nixon: Let’s do it. 

Shannon Byrne: I’m going to break the internet and they’re going to save the swamp. And then they’re going to make a state.

Reverend Antwon Nixon: It’s a done deal. Okefenokee state!

Host: As of this recording we still don’t know whether the Georgia EPD will issue Twin Pines the final permits they need to begin mining near the Okefenokee. But Bill Sapp and other members of the Okefenokee Protection Alliance say their massive coalition is in it for the long haul.

Bill Sapp: Even after everything is resolved with this current mine, we’re going to stick together and continue fighting any threats we come upon to the swamp. It just is crying out to be protected. That’s the power of the Okefenokee Swamp.

MUSIC OUT HERE

(Swamp sounds)

THEME MUSIC IN HERE

Host: That does it for this episode of Broken Ground. If you’re interested in learning more about the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, the alliance that’s formed to protect it, or if you’d just like to see pictures of some of the wonderful people we interviewed or the critters we observed, head to our website: BrokenGroundPodcast.org.

Broken Ground is a podcast by the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. It’s produced by Emily Richardson-Lorente, Noa Greenspan, Paige Polk, Jennie Dailey, and me, Leanna First-Arai, with special thanks to Ko Bragg, Sam Lenga and Pria Mahadevan. Our theme music is by Eric Knutson. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love it if you’d write us a review on your favorite podcast app. We read them all – seriously. Thanks for listening.

THEME MUSIC UP THROUGH END